Airport in battle to move old church

By David Sapsted

12:01AM GMT 10 Dec 2001

A REGIONAL airport says it faces closure unless it is allowed to move a church from the spot where it has stood for almost 1,000 years.

The plan to shift St Laurence and All Saints Church up to 150 yards from where it was built shortly after the Norman Conquest - probably on the site of an even earlier wooden Saxon church - has enraged locals.

It is also being opposed by English Heritage, which says that no church that old has been moved before.

But if the church stays where it is, the multi-million pound expansion of Southend Airport in Essex will not be able to go ahead.

Roger Campbell, the airport's director, says that if the expansion plan is thwarted the airport cannot survive.

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A meeting of the parochial church council next month will decide the future of the church and, consequently, the airport's £6 million development plan, which could create up to 3,000 jobs in the area.

Southend's hopes of attracting holiday charter flights to the Mediterranean and cut-price airlines can only go ahead if a 450-metre buffer zone is in place at the end of the existing runway.

The Rev Nigel Ransom, vicar of the church, which is standing in the middle of that zone, initially understood that the plan would mean lowering some gravestones and felling some trees.

He said: "I was surprised, to put it mildly, when I heard they wanted to hoist the church up, put it on rails and move it between 100 and 150 metres. Apart from actually moving the church, it would mean lots of graves being affected."

Mr Ransom added: "My understanding is that, if the church council opposes the move, then that is the end of the matter"

Though local businesses and most councillors support the airport expansion, which would include a railway station, visitor centre and an airport terminal catering for 300,000 passengers a year, English Heritage, the Government watchdog, looks likely formally to oppose moving St Laurence next year.

Andrew Derrick, inspector of historic buildings at English Heritage, said: "We are very concerned about plans to move the church. It is a fine, historic and unspoiled church with some very important features."